OPM Work-Life Effort May Have Broader Impact

The Office of Personnel Management is launching a series of programs to improve work/life balance for its 5,000 employees, a move that, if successful, many say will cascade throughout the federal government and into the private sector.

During the past several months, President Barack Obama and first lady Michelle Obama have called for employers to do a better job in establishing work/life balance programs.

Rather than launch a series of pilot programs, Berry has created a task force of 12 employees dubbed “The Wolf Pack” to discover what the OPM workforce wants. The OPM also is holding monthly town hall meetings to discuss possibilities for work/life programs, he says.

“I don’t have unlimited money, so we want to come up with a list of priorities,” he says.

“Unfortunately, telework has overtaken everything else,” Kadilak says. “That’s why I think OPM is looking at what they can do in terms of broader work/life programs.”

Currently 34 percent of the OPM’s eligible employees telework, and the agency’s Wolf Pack is talking to academic institutions as well as private employers about other ways to provide work/life balance, Berry says.

“Telework is a great tool and one that we are working to expand and implement more broadly, but by no means is it the be-all, end-all,” he says.

Experts believe that if Berry’s programs are successful, not only will other federal agencies adopt them, but private employers will as well, as they realize they need such programs to compete for talent.

Given the poor economy, many private-sector employees have lost their jobs and are looking at public-sector jobs as an alternative, says Kathie Lingle, director of the Scottsdale, Arizona-based Alliance for Work-Life Progress, a division of WorldatWork.

“A guaranteed pension is looking pretty good right now,” she says. “A lot of the talent that has been fired may not be available to private-sector employers to be rehired unless they implement these kinds of programs.”